Electricians install wire in buildings by pulling different colored strands from standardized wire spools and running the collection of wires through various types of metal and plastic conduits. To make this operation more efficient, the wire spools are mounted on racks where they are free to rotate so as to allow the wire to easily unwind from the spools. Often, as the spools spin, the centrifugal force expands the wraps of wire radially outward to where they fall off the spool and become tangled with each other or the rack. Even after the electrician stops pulling the wire, the spool may continue to spin, under stored momentum, so that the wire billows out into a tangled mess. Thus, a lot of time is wasted keeping the runs of wire clear and free.
This problem is exacerbated when the electrician moves to different parts of the job and, therefore, pulls the wire from different directions. In this situation, wire may try to spiral off the end of the spool without even turning the spool, causing the wire to wrap around the spindle supporting the spool.
The prior art has attempted to deal with this kind of problem by supplying spool supports that have guides incorporated to control the path of the wire. Such devices are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,131,886 to Scheuring and 1,476,778 to Tate. However, these prior art approaches suffer from several problems. First, they hold or contain the spool in a fixed position with the wire path guide in a fixed location so that the wire must exit in a certain place and in a certain direction in order to work well. Second, since they are designed for a given size spool, they are not transferrable to many different size spools. Electrical wire comes on many different size spools, depending on the wire size, function, and manufacturer. An electrician never knows in advance the exact shape and size spool he will be pulling wire from. It would be much superior if he had a wire control device that could control any size and shape spool.
Still another problem with the prior art is complexity and cost. A wire guide should be simple and inexpensive, even though it is adjustable to work with any size spool and in any direction of wire pulling. Otherwise, the guide may cause the electrician more trouble than assistance. The present invention meets these requirements.